Response Blog Post #2
You have probably
heard of the terrifying torture that thousands of Syrian detainees endured in
Bashar al-Assad’s jails. People were tortured, starved and burnt, all because
of the movement of people who were protesting against the Asaad regime, which
has been governing Syria for almost a half century. Russia has many reasons for
supporting Syria. At this point, the only place where Russia and the US hold
common ground is that they want to eliminate ISIS. This is all good and well,
but Syria is not complying with the ISIS defeat attempts. It is true that the current
ongoing civil war and interference by ISIS is creating a lot more of a
complicated problem, but that nonetheless doesn’t change the fact that there
were many human rights violations made by Asaad against his own citizens. There
needs to be some kind of intervention in Syria, to optimally stop both Asaad,
ISIS, and the civil war. However, Russia believes that Asaad should stay in
power. Therefore, the US should try to use its soft power and hard power in
order to get Russia to change its position on Syria.
President Obama said
the US would draw a line if Syria used chemical weapons, and then they used
them in 2013. So, in August of this year, the US used hard power by imposing
sanctions against Syria. Unfortunately, attempts that the US are making, such
as these sanctions, seem to be in vain, because Russia hinders not only
international attempts at intervention, but even Obama administration's
domestic case for air strikes. With Russia’s great resistance to the US’ hard
power against Syria, it seems to be that the most successful way of handling
this situation is through diplomacy with both countries.
The approach that I
think would be best is for the US to convince Russia to let go of their
stronghold of backing Syria so that the US and Russia can face Asaad together.
Though that would be the best solution, the next option would be for the US to
face Asaad directly and use a mixture of soft power and hard power to get him
to compromise, and at the very least, comply with not committing any more human
rights violations. In our IR class, we have learned that hard power is military
or economic coercive power, but soft power is more of a persuasive, attractive
power. The soft power would be to convince Asaad to step down by bargaining
with him and offering him exile and protection. Doing this, combined with
continued efforts at sanctions (hard power), will provide a much more effective
approach to this Syrian crisis.
So how might this work? How can the US use soft power on Russia to get it to no longer back Assad, especially since it is not doing military operations in Syria.
ReplyDeleteIt is hard to pinpoint one exact way to facilitate the use of soft power by the US in order to convince Russia to no longer support Asaad. A couple strategies that come to mind are for the US to host the upcoming Olympics (although this is not really plausible because other cities have already been chosen to host it). In doing this, it would promote the US' culture as a nice, happy place to be, and would possibly give Russia more of a reason to want to have good relations with the US. As we mentioned in class, the goal would be to attract Russia to the US, because attraction often leads to concession, essentially making the country come to its senses and work to compromise with the other country. Another method, in addition to the Olympics, would be to increase academic exchange programs, so that Russian students could see what it's like to live in the US and hopefully experience some common identity between Russia and the US to make these students subsequently take these ideas home with them to inspire a sense of cooperation with the US. Likewise, the US could enlist Hollywood to produce a movie that really captures the essence and culture of the US and then proceed to play that movie in Russia to convince them that we have a nice lifestyle and persuade them to work with us and increase diplomacy, hopefully leading to their withdrawal from backing Asaad.
DeleteI do not think that the U.S. would be willing to risk war in Syria over the injustices of the Assad regime. This makes your proposal of a combination of hard power and soft power a plausible idea. I agree that diplomacy is the best option in this case, rather than giving up on Syria entirely. But I must echo Professor Shirk's question: How would the U.S. convince Russia that curbing the Assad regime's injustices is beneficial to them. I'm not sure what the answer is to this myself, but it's something to think about.
ReplyDeleteAs I explained above in my response to Professor Shirk, there is no clear cut answer to this question. There are a myriad of approaches that can be taken in order to use soft power in our favor to remove Russian support from Syria. We could increase the amount of academic exchange programs so that we could start with affecting the Russian youth and giving them a glimpse of what is like to be in a highly democratic country like the US, therefore making them more inclined to work with us because they accept our culture and understand our lifestyle. Furthermore, we could have a nice Hollywood movie be made to showcase America (maybe even exaggerate a bit) as a beautiful, free country and then play the movie in Russia to persuade them to work with us diplomatically. Moreover, the US could host the Olympics, which is also known to increase soft power. These are all my initial ideas, but there are many more approaches that could be taken to solve this problem and use soft power to our advantage.
DeleteI think this is interesting, especially considering that the civil war in Syria may also become a broader international conflict as Russia and US position themselves on either side of the fighting. I think here that US support of Assad's regime could be an ugly yet effective solutions. US desire to combat ISIL may force it to work with Assad, and restoring peace to the country would also relieve the migrant crisis as citizens could return home. War seems unwinnable and unlikely coming off fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, and I believe that keeping some form of the Assad regime operating could be the best option to return stability to the country. The regime needs to stay, because without the regime as part of some kind of a future provisional or transitional government, there is going to be a power vacuum that simply results in the Islamic State filling that vacuum and taking over the country. I do not know the logistics of how we should cooperate with the Assad regime, but I think it should be considered a strong possibility moving forward
ReplyDeleteI did not even consider the power vacuum that would occur after the withdrawal of Asaad as president. That is a very good point. However, you are disregarding the fact that although Syria says that it is fighting ISIS, it really is fighting an extremely low amount of ISIS groups, and in fact is fighting many groups that are anti-terrorism (the majority of the groups that Syria is attacking are against terrorism), more so than it is attacking the ISIS terrorist groups. So, if Asaad stays and we do have effective diplomacy with him, this would be a major issue that needs to be addressed.
DeleteI do not think that we can get the Russians to back down simply because we want them to. There has to be some incentive for them to abandon their position of power to seem subservient to US interests. Putin has spent a lot of energy and time trying to assert himself as the high power in that region, and this support of the Assad regime is an example of that. If we respect Russian interests in Syria, and give them the hegemony over that region, then perhaps then we can go about trying to scale back the human rights violations.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that Russia is going to be stubborn and stand with Syria in order to maintain its position of power. I don't think it will be productive, though, for us to simply "respect" Russian interests in Syria, depending on what you mean by that term, because as long as Russia is supporting Syria and allowing for prolonged attacks on non-ISIS groups and subsequent human rights violations, we are not taking any steps forward. There needs to be something to sever the tie between those two countries.
DeleteI think one of the most interesting points brought up in your post is the number of factions that are operating in this conflict. Rather than it being a two sided civil war, ISIS is also involved in the fighting, not to mention the Russian forces that are involved. I think that the biggest issue in this conflict is the fact that, of the parties involved, Russia may be the only rational actor. I say this because to this point, negotiating with ISIS is not an option, Assad's regime has continued to commit human rights violations despite the pressure on him to stop, and the rebels are not a clear cut entity with which a nation can negotiate. I think the lack of an ability to communicate amongst these groups is in fact the largest obstacle to finding a solution to the conflict.
ReplyDeleteI understand what makes you think that Russia is the only rational actor in this conflict, and I partly agree, but what someone had mentioned in class and what I think is worth noting is that to the Syrians and to the terrorists acting in this conflict, they are acting rationally because they are taking the actions needed to advance their beliefs. Although you and I probably can agree that we see their actions of killing innocent people as irrational, to them, it is rational. It is scary to think that the ISIS groups in Syria are spread out and hard to identify and therefore communicate with.
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